Month: July 2004

Philip Dru: Administrator will be interviewing frequent contributors to Antiwar.com Jacob G. Hornberger and Elaine Cassel today from 4 – 6PM EST. The radio interviews will be streamed on the web. There’s a high-bandwidth link and a low-bandwidth link.

Maybe.

Despite months of stonewalling, obstruction of the investigation, denials and lies by the US military in Iraq, it appears that at least the 3 soldiers responsible for the murder of Zaydun Ma’mun Fadhil Hassun Al-Samarrai, who was forced to jump from a bridge into the freezing waters of the Tigris river last January. This is a victory of sorts for his family, who refused to give up their quest for justice for their son, and also for the blogosphere – in particular zeyad of Healing Iraq, who helped to get the word out about the death of his relative and called on bloggers everywhere to keep the story alive. Improbably, even Glenn Reynolds at Instamonger linked it, which set him up for quite a bit of criticism from his regular warblogger compadres.

The American general formerly in charge of Abu Ghraib prison has told the BBC that she has evidence that the Israelis were involved in interrogating Iraqi detainees at another facility.

Brig Gen Janis Karpinski, who was suspended in May over allegations of prisoner abuse, said she met a man claiming to be Israeli during a visit to a Baghdad intelligence centre with a senior coalition general.

“I saw an individual there that I hadn’t had the opportunity to meet before, and I asked him what did he do there, was he an interpreter – he was clearly from the Middle East,” Karpinski told BBC radio in an interview broadcast today.

“He said, ’Well I do some of the interrogation here. I speak Arabic but I’m not an Arab I’m from Israel.’ “I was really kind of surprised by that … He didn’t elaborate any more than to say he was working with them and there were people from lots of different places that were involved in the operation,” Karpinski added.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry told the BBC that reports of Israeli troops or interrogators in Iraq were “completely untrue.” Israeli officials could not immediately be reached.

continued…

Well, well, well. Israeli interrogators involved in US military interrogations in Iraq. Imagine that.

I just got back from seeing Moore’s anti-Bush cinematic editorial. Rather than review it I’ll comment on issues already raised on this site, starting with Eric Garris’s blog posting, “Sorry, I didn’t like it.”

“I got to the theater early to beat the crowds (not so much for the matinee), full of anticipation.”

I had serious reservations about Moore’s last film Bowling for Columbine (for one thing, I didn’t like Moore’s rudeness to Charlton Heston while he was a guest in Heston’s house) so I wouldn’t say I was full of anticipation but I’d heard and read enough about F9/11 that I was pretty sure I wouldn’t hate it. I tried to see it twice this week in the evening and it was sold out both times, so today, a week after it opened, I went to a matinee early and was able to get tickets before it sold out.

“The movie opens with Moore’s version of the ‘stealing’ of the 2000 election by the Bush family. Regardless of one’s opinion of this event, it should be clear that this was the weakest opening he could have gone for in terms of actually convincing those not predisposed to hate GW Bush.”

I thought the dreamlike Gore near-victory rally opening was effective. I realized watching it that the past few years have seemed politically nightmarish: 9/11, to start with; then the cover-ups and lies, invasions, PATRIOT Act, and color-coded terror warnings; the hyperventilating, hyperactive, irrational jingoism; the perverse, 1984-ish hatred of France; ‘liberventionism’; the rehabilitation of imperialism and big government; the overstaying of the half-hearted-welcome of the disgusting, arrogant, faces, voices, and body language of Bush (his famous sneer), Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Rice (“I believe the title was ‘Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States,'” indeed. Why don’t you check on that and get back to us tomorrow. And, by the way, I have another document here. I believe it’s called “The Negligent Perma-Hawk Condoleezza Rice is Fired Effective Immediately”); the neocons and the debate about the neocons; John Ashcroft, who I wouldn’t trust with my houseplants, never mind the nation’s liberty and security; and let’s not forget the rise of the androids on Fox News and their copycats on those other channels.

F9/11’s election-stealing segment gave examples of conflict of interest, a relevant and recurring theme. The news shows were counting Florida as a Gore win until Fox News called it for Bush; the person at Fox who made this decision was a first cousin of one of the candidates. The woman who ran Bush’s campaign was also the state of Florida official responsible for the election. Bush I had appointed judges who voted for a Bush II presidency (in apparent violation of the conservative principle of state’s rights).

“He then spends about 20 minutes on the ‘Saudi connection,’ which actually struck me as quite racist.”

Racist? Moore shows images of Bushies with Saudi VIPs while criticizing the connections between Bushies and Saudi VIPs. Later he shows footage of happy Iraqis before the US invasion, then suffering Iraqis after the invasion. He clearly intends for us to view Iraqis sympathetically. This is an anti-racist message (something like: in the Middle East, as in the United States, most people are good but the rich and powerful aren’t to be trusted) unless Iraqi and Saudi Arabs are viewed as being members of different races. And we know that Americans have trouble distinguishing between Iraqis and Saudis on even a national basis (a fact lamentably demonstrated by the confusion over which country’s nationals attacked us on 9/11), so obviously they’re considered members of the same race.

(Note: this blog message originally contained a short, poorly-expressed comment that angered some readers. Rather than explain and re-hash what was meant to be a minor point, I’ve deleted the few sentences. – SK)

Kerry Defines Middle East Policy

This is the first of what I hope will be many blog entries here. As those of you who read Justin’s article already know, I’m Antiwar.com’s latest hiree.

Today we got a glimpse at John Kerry’s official Middle East Policy. Now, obviously I wasn’t expecting Kerry to emerge as an antiwar candidate or anything, but some of this stuff is pretty surprising. Note that the stuff in italics isn’t paraphrase, nor is it an interpretation, these are direct quotes.

John Kerry understands that America must guarantee Israel’s military superiority

Now, its obviously been US policy to defend Israel from its many, many enemies. But I believe this is the first time its actually been suggested that it is America’s duty to keep Israel militarily superior to them. Obviously this means military aid, and lots of it. Indeed, elsewhere in the policy report Kerry brags about his record of opposing any cuts to Israeli aid.

John Kerry understands that anti-Semitism masked in anti-Israel rhetoric is a dangerous trend threatening both Israel and Jewish communities around the world.

Its been extremely fashionable, of course, to suggest that those who oppose any action by Israel are defacto anti-Semites (indeed, more than one Antiwar.com columnist has had that charge levied against him), but isn’t making such accusations more the job of the mainstream media than politicians?

Now that’s not surprising in and of itself, but the rest of the paragraph kind of was:

John Kerry has always fought against anti-Semitism and as president, he will take governments around the world to task for failing to address this escalating threat.

How does one address a belief that is considered threatening? There’s one obvious answer: censorship.

In the wake of this pretty much blind support of Israeli policies, there’s a question that’s begging to be asked. What’re the odds it will be? Pretty close to 0%, I’d say:

“Senator Kerry, recently Israel’s Deputy Defense Minister asserted that Israel could wipe out the entire Gaza Strip in a matter of hours. You have said in your Middle East Policy that you support the right of Israel to ‘eliminate threats’ to its citizens, would you support Israel taking such action, even though it would almost certainly result in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians? “

Or was it Cheney’s run home? The New York Times reported in this article last Wednesday that VP Dick Cheney was booed during the seventh inning of the Yankees-Red Socks baseball game at Yankee Stadium the night before. According to Tristero: Fair and Balanced blog this is what really happened:

What the Times left out–and what we heard from two different people who attended the game–was that the booing, jeers and catcalls were so loud and so widespread that the Secret Service hustled the Vice President out of the stadium immediately, fearing for his safety.